Title IX still restricting growth of lacrosse at the collegiate level

Three straight national championships. Nine straight conference titles. Thirteen years at the helm of the country's best collegiate club lacrosse program.

John Paul fell into the University of Michigan lacrosse head coaching position by accident. Originally interested in a career in athletic administration, Paul began helping coach local Michigan high school programs and the UM club team whenever possible. But when the then-coach of the Wolverines' club program stepped down, Paul was asked to take over. The rest was no accident.

However, not many people outside the lacrosse world know about Paul’s success. Michigan plays in the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association (MCLA). Title IX, a law enacted in 1972 and designed to ensure equal opportunities in college athletics for both men and women, offers three prongs by which athletic departments can comply. The school can comply by continually expanding athletic opportunities or accommodating the interests of the underrepresented gender. However, historically, the first prong, which says athletic opportunities must equal the gender percentage enrollment of the undergraduate population, has become the standard to show compliance, since the other two prongs are difficult to measure.

But this proportionality prong has created a quota system that forces Division I-A (known as the Football Bowl Subdivision) athletic directors to either double their financial burden if they want to add a men’s lacrosse team, because a corresponding women’s sport must be added in order to maintain compliance with Title IX, or not add the sport at all. To date, the decision among many FBS schools outside the Eastern Seaboard has been that lacrosse isn't worth the financial hassle.

“If somebody can figure out how to resolve the conundrum of Title IX, put a trademark on it, because you’ll be a very rich person,” says Mary Jo Kane, a professor of sport sociology at the University of Minnesota and a Title IX expert. “But if you’re an athletic director who lives in the trenches every day [fighting] some theoretical law that lives in Washington, you’re in a position where you’re going to have to come up [with money] every year that you don’t have, or you can turn around and say here’s an opportunity to drop or not add a men’s sport.”

Consider: In 2009, there were approximately 137,000 high school males playing lacrosse. Yet, according to statistics compiled by the College Sports Council, the ratio of male high school lacrosse players matched to the NCAA Division I level is 1277:1. The odds of males receiving a lacrosse scholarship are 100.6:1. Both numbers are about twice as much as the corresponding figures for women. Comparitively, ice hockey's ratio is 620:1 and odds of a scholarship are 34.4:1. Basketball, the only revenue sport on the list since football isn't included, has a ratio of 1,706:1 and scholarship odds of 131.3:1.

“At the major [FBS] football schools, it’s a completely different business model than everything else in college athletics,” says Paul. “For a big school, it doesn’t make as much sense, from a business perspective, to add $2, 3 or 4 million to the budget to add a men’s and women’s program if they’re not going to get a return on that.”

It may not make sense in today’s economic climate to add another two varsity programs (men’s lacrosse and a comparable women’s team), since only 25 of the 119 FBS schools reported a net revenue for the 2008 fiscal year. However, the growth at the high school level begs the question of ‘If not now, then when?’
“There’s been talk [of jumping to a varsity program] as long as I’ve been here,” says Trevor Yealy, a rising senior at Michigan. “The main reason why it’s not a Division I sport here is money. Hopefully the funds come together so the university can have a solid foundation to work with and add lacrosse and whatever women’s sport they choose.”

Only 10 Division I men's lacrosse teams have been added since 1981, bringing the total number of DI programs to 60 in 2010. And only 12 FBS schools currently offer Division I men’s lacrosse. There are 91 DI women’s programs.

“A big part of the future of the expansion of lacrosse will be driven by the generosity of the donors and the development communities of the various institutions and whether they’re willing to step up and help make it fiscally possible for schools to move in that direction,” says University of Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon. “If people are so passionate about lacrosse and there are donors and advocates of varsity lacrosse who are really interested and believe in the long-term investment, they’re going to have to step up and help because that’s one of the prerequisites to it ever happening.”
Lacrosse is an expensive sport, and with an average men’s roster of 44 players and average women’s roster of 27, a major hurdle in lacrosse’s expansion is convincing athletic directors that adding the sport benefits the school.

“[Title IX] just adds financial pressure; whenever you add a men’s sport, you have to come up with a way to add a commensurate sport,” Brandon says. “Because it's about head count, not just numbers of sports. Lacrosse is a pretty head-count intensive sport. I have a pretty clear understanding of the number of athletes that the men’s lacrosse coach would want, and we would need to match that with the corresponding women’s sport, and the combination of those two creates a significant financial hurdle.”

Michigan, however, was one of those 25 schools to report a net revenue in 2008 and also in 2009. According to athletic department records, Michigan reported over $24 million in profits over the last two fiscal years.

“When you take an outside look at [Michigan’s] budget, it’s doable,” Paul says. “But they have to see a benefit to doing it, and that’s what we’re trying to convince them of. … We’re having success convincing a lot of people around Michigan, but the guy who needs to pull the trigger is the athletic director.”
Based on 2008 Department of Education statistics, the average yearly combined cost to run both a men’s and women’s Division I lacrosse program is about $1.25 million. Average combined revenue for both programs, however, is about $1 million.

“The reality is that you must distinguish between an economic model that is revenue-producing versus profit-generating,” says Mary Jo Kane. “The vast majority of schools in Division I don't make a profit. They not only don’t subsidize everybody else, they do not even pay for themselves.”

Paul says his yearly budget as an MCLA program is approximately $900,000. Donations make up about $500,000 of that figure, with the rest coming from equipment, apparel and other various team sponsors. But to run a top-notch Division I program, Paul estimates he'll need a yearly budget of about $1.5 million.

“We have donors that are very generous that fortunately have the capability to make a significant impact,” Paul says. “But that’s the question: If a program is going to cost $1.5 million a year, are we going to be able to generate that kind of revenue? The real answer is probably not. We can’t become, in the short-term, a revenue-producing sport.”

So the question becomes: If lacrosse isn’t a self-sustaining sport, what’s the future?

“I don’t know if we can sustain our program at the club level at the level we’ve sustained it financially forever,” Paul says. “For us, it’s either varsity or bust in the next few years.”

Brian Schneider wrote for Inside Lacrosse as a player at Hofstra and is finishing up a Master's degree in journalism from Northwestern.